Laila Abdul-Hadi Jadallah (she/her/hers) is a seasoned arts administrator, independent curator and arts researcher based in Washington, D.C., working at the intersection between contemporary art, cultural diplomacy, and policy. Jadallah has over fifteen years of experience in international, national, and regional museum and gallery exhibitions, public art, interdisciplinary programming, and non-profit and local governmental leadership.
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Jadallah currently serves as the inaugural Manager of Arts and Culture for the City of Frederick where she is initiating the city’s comprehensive arts and culture program strategic plan, and oversees the city’s public art, cultural programs, and art collection. From 2022—2024, Jadallah was the Director of Exhibitions and Programs at the Qatar America Institute for Culture, curating and overseeing exhibitions, interdisciplinary programs, and transnational partnerships. From 2018 to 2022, she served as the inaugural Managing Director of Washington Studio School where she successfully stewarded the organization’s repositioning as a multi-generational and multi-cultural arts space. Jadallah has extensive experience working with museums across the U.S.
As an independent curator and arts researcher, Jadallah is interested the alternative histories, new visual languages, and contributions of modern and contemporary diaspora artists to the art historical canon. She has curated numerous exhibitions featuring celebrated and emerging artists from West Asia and North Africa and their diasporas, as well as contemporary artists from the United States. Her curatorial work has been featured in The Washington Post, Canvas Magazine, The National News and more. Throughout her career, Jadallah has worked with numerous emerging and celebrated artists across the United States, West Asia, North Africa, and their diasporas.
She recently served on the Arts at Mason Board (George Mason University College of Visual and Performing Arts), and previously served on the board of Washington Studio School, and the Executive Committee of the Washington, D.C.-region chapter of ArtTable, Inc. where she cochaired State of Art5/DC: A Conversation at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (2019). Jadallah is a member of Arts Administrators of Color Network, artconnexDC, and the Association of Art Museum Curators.
Jadallah received a B.A. from the School of Integrative Studies at George Mason University, and her M.A. from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service (summa cum laude) with a focus on modern and contemporary art history and culture of the Arab world. She was a 2024 U.S. Office of Personnel Management Presidential Management Fellowship Finalist and a Middle East Policy Council 2024 40 Under 40 Awardee for her work in the arts. Previously, she was a Student Fellow at Georgetown’s Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics (2020/2021) and a two-time D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities Artist Fellow. Her writing has appeared in CCAS Newsmagazine, OVER Journal, and Tribe Magazine and will be included in the anthology A Decolonial Guide to Palestine published by Duke University Press.